Tribeca premiere has been a hit at the Swiss box office.

The Divine Order

Switzerland has selected Petra Volpe’s The Divine Order as its submission for this year’s foreign language Oscar race.

The film played at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival where it won three prizes including the audience award.

Set in 1981 in a small Swiss village, it stars Marie Leuenberger in the story of one woman’s campaign to secure women’s right to vote in the country.

TrustNordisk handles world rights and has secured deals in 15 territories, including with Kino Lorber and Zeitgeist films jointly for the US, where it will be released in October.

The local release in Switzerland has seen the film sell more than 300,000 tickets nationally.

At the Swiss national film awards it won best actress for Leuenberger and best supporting actress for Rachel Braunschweig. It was beaten to the best film prize by My Life As A Courgette, which was Switzerland’s submission to the Academy last year.

The Divine Order was produced by Reto Schaerli and Lukas Hobi for Zodiac Pictures, with co-producers Swiss Radio and Television and Teleclub; with support from Swiss Federal Office of Culture, Zurich Film Foundation, Canton of Aargau, Lucerne and Appenzell Ausserrhoden, Suissimage and Migros Kulturprozent.

This year’s foreign language Oscar was won by Asghar Farhadi’s The Salesman. The 2018 Oscars are set to take place on March 4.